The TV game show phrase is acquiring a new meaning, with young urban Indians deciding who to communicate and bond with depending on the gizmos and services they use. Blackberry Messenger and Apple's new chat feature are, besides making SMSing redundant, creating technological communities that are set apart by the services their loyalists swear by. Sowmya Rajaram tries making sense of technology inbreeding

Best friends Rahul Nanda and Adrian D'souza haven't SMSed each other in over a month. Calls have reduced to a trickle in the last three weeks. It's not what you think. The fallout of a pow wow over divided loyalties over the FIFA World Cup, is not exactly the reason. It's just that BBM has taken over their lives. And friendship.


Rahul and Adrian laugh over a joke sent to them over BBM. Texting and
calling have become redundant for the duo, who now communicate almost
entirely over BBM. The plan to meet at Candies, one of Bandra's most popular
cafes, was also made over BBM. PIC/ Vikas Munipalle

For the uninitiated, BBM stands for Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry's instant messaging feature. Get with it, fuddy-duddies.u00a0

When George W Bush made his infamous "if you are not with us, you are against us" speech in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks... on the World Trade Centre in New York, he didn't know he was gifting technological communities a fitting phrase.

iLove
Don't believe us? Check this out. Loyal fans of Apple, a brand long known for the extreme allegiance and insularity that characterises its products and faithful users, now has a dating site exclusively for Apple users.

Called Cupidtino, the dating site was launched simultaneously with the iPhone 4, and professes to help you find love among similar fruit lovers.

Call it snobbery or what you will, but site founder Mel Sampath believes diehard 'Machearts' often have common creative professions, and not to forget, terminology that is the stuff of lovely-dovey texts exchanged over iPhones. Calling these "fundamental enough reasons for two people to meet and fall in love", Sampath has launched what may be the first formal clique of geeks in love with white Apples, although it still has to get any official endorsement from Apple itself.

And if that's not enough, the site runs only on Apple products -- the iPhone, iPad and Safari browsers.

Somewhere, we hear Steve Jobs chuckling in delight.

Thumb buddies
He is not alone. The popularity of BBM, we are sure, has head honchos at RIM (Research in Motion) laughing all the way to the bank. After all, it's not every day that a service shows a 500 per cent jump in usage in one year, says Satchit Gayakwad, RIM India spokesperson.

It's not difficult to see why. "I believe consumers look for convenience at a cost, rather than the need to belong to a brand. When that convenience epitomises service, it rubs off on the brand, and that's exactly what has happened with Blackberry," says Rammohan Sundaram, founder, CEO and MD, NetworkPlay.in.

Gayakwad agrees. "It's live and it's in real time. Humans are social by default, so when a tool that enhances social ability and interaction comes along, we are quick to latch on to it. That's why BBM is wildly popular."
That's probably why Nokia, that ubiquitous, honorary cell phone company that most Indian users still continue to patronise, has jumped the bandwagon too.

In April this year, it launched its own Instant Messaging (IM) client that allows you to hook up as many as 10 email accounts and toggle between them to chat with friends independent of their devices, as well as a Nokia-to-Nokia chat client called Ovi.

Aimed at people who do not have an email account and would rather check mail over the phone, Ovi lets you create an email account in three easy steps, then chat, in real time, with another Nokia user. No minimising and maximising multiple chat windows here; simply sign into different accounts and toggle between them to keep in touch.